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Where CTO Jed McCaleb Sees Blockchain Headed

Jed McCaleb is an American programmer who was one of the pioneers of blockchain and bitcoin. He founded Mt Gox which was the earliest bitcoin exchange platform. He moved on from that business a number of years ago and now works for an organization he co-founded, Stellar Development Group. His company created the cryptocurrency Stellar which is now one of the ten most traded digital currency in the world.

As a recognized expert when it comes to blockchain, in an interview he conducted CNBC Jed McCaleb said that he sees this technology branching out well beyond cryptocurrencies and he says this is already happening. An example he gives is a Maryland startup called Securrency. They are developing an online platform where he says people one day will be able to buy use bitcoin to buy stocks.

He says that there are issues with bitcoin which Stellar solves. Jed McCaleb says that one of bitcoins biggest problem is that it can take way to long for a transaction to be completed. On the other hand Stellar, he says, can conduct a transaction settlement within five seconds. Another problem with bitcoin is transferring it to government-backed currencies. He says Stellar also solves this and be easily transferred back and forth to both the dollar and the euro.

The biggest problem with the way the global financial system works is that it can’t provide services to about half of the world’s population because it is unprofitable. Jed McCaleb says that Stellar can tackle this problem and bring banking solutions to the masses. It is very easy to make cross-border payments using his digital currency and it can create a network of what are now siloed financial institutions.

As the chief technology officer of Stellar, he spends quite a bit of his time introducing improvements to the programming that backs this cryptocurrency up. Jed McCaleb says that he uses open source software and keeps his programming well documented so it is easy for other programmers to use as well. Beyond his role at Stellar, he also serves as a technology advisor to an artificial intelligence organization called MIRI.